The South Korea economy timeline documents the country's transformation from a war-ravaged agrarian nation in 1960 into a global industrial and technological p…
Following the military coup led by Park Chung-hee, South Korea abandoned import substitution and enacted its First Five-Year Economic Development Plan in 1962. The gover…
Recognizing the limits of low-wage light manufacturing like textiles and wigs, the government launched the Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive in 1973. Massive state resou…
Driven by aggressive overseas marketing and expanding manufacturing output, South Korea officially crossed the $10 billion export mark in 1977. This achievement, celebra…
Hosting the 1988 Summer Olympics served as South Korea's grand coming-out party to the international community. Billions of global viewers witnessed a modernizing, democ…
Decades of debt-fueled chaebol expansion culminated in a severe liquidity crunch, forcing South Korea to accept a historic $58 billion bailout from the International Mon…
By the early 2000s, state and private investments in research and development bore fruit as South Korean firms captured dominant global market shares in DRAM memory chip…
In December 2011, South Korea officially joined the elite club of nations whose annual trade volume surpassed $1 trillion. Driven by robust free trade agreements with th…
Amid global supply chain disruptions in 2020, South Korea leveraged its advanced smart factories and robust health logistics to keep exports flowing. Concurrently, the g…
January-August 2026 exports reached $709.4 billion, already above all of 2025's record annual total, with Korea Customs Service projecting a crossing of $1 trillion in a…
Read the complete story, FAQs and key facts.